Probably the best strike partner for Maxim Tsigalko was of course the potentially world class finisher from Portugal, that was Tó Madeira. He is available to buy for about £650k from a club called Gouveia. But this is the clincher, I cannot find a football team from Gouveia and most importantly there is no such player as Tó Madeira! I am of course talking again about Championship Manager 01/02.

Tó Madeira - the legend himself...virtually...

It’s one of the great mysteries in manager games how a player who was completely ficticious is more famous than actual real footballers today, well I suppose he’s an idol for us because he doesn’t earn a ridiculous amount of money! I don’t have a picture of him as he doesn’t exist so I created him in the FIFA 11 Creation Centre above, and this was my interpretation on how he looked.

In my CM01/02 experiences it was Bear who “discovered” him for me and swore by him as a stunning centre forward. While he doesn’t have the massive cult following like Maxim Tsigalko, he still managed to score a sack full of goals and rapidly could become one of your clubs greatest assets within about 4 seasons. He, like Tsigalko, was one of the few players in the game who could net more goals than games in some seasons.

There are lots of rumours circulating about his creation or even why Eidos added in a fictional player but various sources I have found through research was one of the researchers for the game actually had a career at Gouveia in Portugal but his career was cut short through studies and injuries. Thus Tó Madeira was born, well created, as the imaginative career of this developer who has started from humble beginnings to become one of the greatest players of all time. Eidos being the spoil sports that they can be decided to axe Tó Madeira from later incarnations of the game leaving him to be the legend trapped in CM 01/02 for all eternity. A legend in my eyes, and great piece of CM folklore.

1 Comment for this entry

Reading this has made me really want another champ man game…and as luck would have it, 5 minutes of research shows me that Eidos have released the 01/02 edition as a free download!

Now that appeals to me a hell of a lot more than getting a new version, so my night will now consist of downloading and playing this, while quickly snapping up the apparently lucrative signatures of both Maxim Tsigalko and Tó Madeira!

Just hoping that as its such an old version it will run easily on a netbook (the main problem might end up being screen size i suppose).